by Guest Author | Oct 27, 2023 | Change Management, Emotional Intelligence at Work
There are so many ways to “lead” that sometimes we get confused trying to distinguish them all. At the end of the day, it may not matter as long as leadership happens. But what are you really good at? What kind of leadership can you become more intentional about? What kind of leadership can you become known for?
As the command-and-control model of leadership rapidly gives way to influential leadership styles, let’s look at two leadership models that are available to just about anyone at any level, change leadership and thought leadership. They are not the same, although together they can be powerful. Which can you adapt into your leadership style?
Change Leadership
I believe that every leader should master the dynamics of change, because most of what we lead these days is changing at such a rapid pace. But mastering change means understanding both the technical and social complexities of what makes change desirable and manageable. Most of us are better at the technical stuff because we’re trained, we’re smart and the subject matter has more objective elements that can be measured and analyzed.
The social, subjective, human stuff is more challenging by definition, so it’s where we need to spend more of our developmental energy. The principles of change mastery are relatively simple, understanding human motivation and group dynamics, but mastering them is a personal journey. Mastering change leadership requires us to be intentional about how we are personally motivated, how we interact with others and how we can get our own hang-ups out of the way of the change we’re trying to lead.
Want to be a change leader? Master the human dynamic, starting with yourself.
Thought Leadership
The title “thought leader” is often reserved for those rarified authors, researchers and industry titans who blow our minds with new ideas. Think of Mark Benioff who launched Salesforce.com and in less than two short decades has redefined the software industry with his tireless championing (and brilliant execution of) of what is now known as cloud computing.
In fact, thought leadership is accessible to everyone at every level in an organization and it’s a key strategy in becoming an influential leader. It’s also a key Personal Brand strategy.
We all toss our opinions on the table, but the thought leader does more than that. Thought leaders put ideas and opinions out that have underlying rationales capable of being tested, adapted and evolved. More importantly, the thought leader “leads” by doing the thinking that others won’t, don’t or can’t. Thought leaders stand by their ideas and in doing so, reframe and shift discussions in the direction that allows the solution to present itself. Thought leaders don’t take the debate on their ideas personally; they accept “wins” and “defeats” gracefully and, when combined with delivering results, they get noticed, sponsored and promoted.
Think your ideas have the power to shift the dialog? Then lead with them by doing the work others won’t, don’t or can’t to develop your ideas and stand by them. Learn to advocate effectively and become known as someone who does the extra thinking, the kind that helps everyone reach their goals. Your business needs you to stand by your ideas even more than it needs your opinions.
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by Guest Author | Oct 25, 2023 | Corporate Culture, Emotional Intelligence at Work, People Skills
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the cure for the Toxic Boss. But of course, it’s not quite that easy. S/he’s a boss, after all! Sadly, this cure does not come in the form of pill, either.
Toxic bosses are a disease in the workplace and corporate culture more broadly. Like most diseases toxicity has always been there, and more recently we’ve begun to understand it’s cost; employee turnover. If employees are leaving toxic bosses, it’s not a stretch to imagine a toxic employee can drive away customers as well—though perhaps more indirectly since a toxic boss (and their corporate culture) will often excuse their bad behavior on their ability to keep customers happy (e.g., Steve Jobs.)
While most of us feel compelled to focus on how to get rid of the disease, I believe that it’s at least as important to find some EQ antibodies and give them a boost. Emotional Intelligence can be exactly that kind of inoculation against toxic people. Why? Because toxic bosses feed on those with low EQ, and a corporate culture that doesn’t value EQ is a natural haven for toxic bosses to thrive.
3 Strategies for Handling the Toxic Boss
Beware that you don’t fall into the emotionally unintelligent habit of thinking you’ve only succeeded if you “fix” the toxic boss.
In dealing with toxic people, success means anything from minimizing their negative impact to helping them see their opportunity for personal growth. In the latter case, they might be able to accept your support (or others) to begin to “fix” themselves—maybe. Any kind of toxic-person success starts when you become personally comfortable dealing with the toxicity in a way that demonstrates to the rest of the culture that toxicity doesn’t have to be coddled. This is how you use a toxic boss to your own advantage and the advantage of all the other employees around you.
Emotional Intelligence is the antidote to the toxic boss. – Click To Tweet
Whether it’s your boss, or someone in your organization who you interface with—whether it’s someone above you or below you—try these strategies with them.
1. Learn not to get triggered
This isn’t the same as hiding your ruffled feathers. People smell it when you’re faking. Practice detriggering yourself so that you genuinely don’t get upset when the toxic person tries to punch your buttons. When you’re genuinely detriggered and dealing with a toxic person, others can see—sometimes for the first time—what successfully navigating a toxic personal relationship can look like. This insight can be empowering to them, because then they can aspire to it themselves. You might have to practice detriggering for a while until it comes naturally, but it can be done.
2. Support those taking the brunt of the toxicity
For those employees who are in the line of fire, toxicity begins to feel normal after a while. Remind them, by dealing with them compassionately, that it’s not normal. Encourage them to see dealing with the toxic boss as an opportunity for them to grow emotionally (e.g., to learn to detrigger). Give them opportunities to vent, but help them turn that energy into a desire to find their EQ equilibrium to the extent they can working with such toxicity.
3. Have Compassion for the Toxic Boss
As counter-intuitive as it can feel when dealing with toxic people, if you’re operating from a place of emotional intelligence, you can see the toxic person as wounded and undermining their own success. You can see the cost of their toxicity to them personally. And if you can see that, you just might be the one to help them see it eventually. Don’t take on the burden of trying to fix them (after all only they can really do that for themselves anyway), but carry this perspective in your heart and look for the opportunity that may come for you to share this perspective with them in a moment where they might be able to see it for themselves.
Should You Quit A Toxic Boss?
If you’re one of the people taking the brunt of toxicity, you may ask yourself every day why you shouldn’t quit. It’s a reasonable question. Toxic bosses are a good reason to quit a job, but I will give you one piece of advice: do your best to learn to deal with a toxic boss so you are less vulnerable to other toxic people in the future.
Quite often when you polish up your emotional intelligence skills, toxic bosses find you less interesting. You’re less attractive to them as a target if they have bully tendencies so they will take out more of their toxicity on other people. So use your current toxic boss to help you develop the skills that make you less interesting to all kinds of toxic personalities.
There are plenty of other strategies you can use to deal with toxic bosses in your workplace, but I guarantee that if you engage in the approaches above, all the other ones will reveal themselves to you over time and in a situationally appropriate way.
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by Guest Author | Oct 24, 2023 | Change Management, Corporate Culture, Diversity, Emotional Intelligence at Work
Despite being the #1 recruiting trend for 2018 for businesses, and despite decades of trying to improve workforce diversity demographics in the workplace, the commercial sector has made little progress. I believe this supports the theory that homogeneous workplaces are more the result of unconscious bias than a lack of awareness, policy, training or outright bigotry.
Even though there are few signs of statistical progress, the workforce diversity discussion seems to be moving on and evolving anyway. Specifically, it is exploring the question of why diversity matters at all, and what kind of diversity matters most when it comes to building an effective workforce. Will this different way of thinking about diversity make our organizations better? (more…)
by Guest Author | Oct 21, 2023 | Emotional Intelligence at Work, Personal Mastery, Work-Life Blend
Good leaders need to be reasonable managers, able to make sure the important stuff gets done from day to day, but a true leader’s potential is discovered and exercised during times of business transformation. It is in those times that the leaders truly change the world. The words “change and transformation” are used a lot interchangeably and I’ve come to believe their meaning has pretty much been lost in modern business. “Change and transformation” don’t just mean “different than the way things are today.”
What is business transformation?
I love Chris McGoff’s distinction of CHANGE VS. TRANSFORMATION in The PRIMES. Change is improvement on the past (e.g., better, faster cheaper, ______er.) Transformation is something else altogether – a new thing, designed to achieve a vision of the future that isn’t here yet and is waiting to be created by us.
Transformation is what happened to Shell Oil in the mid 70’s when they redefined themselves as an energy company instead of an oil company. Transformation is what happened when the Internet turned into the web thanks to intuitive interface inventions like the hyperlink and the browser that organized information for human consumption instead of computer consumption. Transformation is what happened when Zappos gave customer service agents free reign to make customers happy instead of instructions about how to handle their calls.
From the outside, transformation can appear magical – like the emergence of a butterfly from a caterpillar cocoon, but when we look inside, we see very definite patterns which are repeatable if not predictable, and this is why transformation is more an art than a science.
Repeatable Patterns of Transformation
Here are the key elements of any business transformation, using the examples above and a few others:
- Define radical success: In any transformational effort, the definition of success initially sounds a little crazy. Zappos went for 100% customer satisfaction, Shell set a target that a meaningful percentage of their revenue would someday come from chemical products. Looking at these things with our 40/40 hindsight, including how the market and technology developed, makes sense. However, from the perspective of where the market had been, and prevailing norms at the time these way-out goals were set, these were radical goals.
- Understand what’s at stake if you don’t: It takes more than just a dream of the future to motivate groups of people to change, much less transform. For people to get up and move, they must not only be able to understand the radical definition of success you offer, but they must also believe that complacence with the current situation is not an option. The major inhibitor to transformation isn’t failure, it’s inertia. The catch in business is that you have to counter the inertia of many different people, all motivated by different things. Chris McGoff has identified the three ways people are motivated – intellectually, emotionally and financially – to transform in his STAKE PRIME. If you want to start seeing Change and Transformation happen in your world, starting asking people what’s at stake if things stay as they are. For an example of this, read about my recent power breakfast.
- Look back once, and then never again: Make sure you honor the past and take from it a few things of value, but don’t let it be your guide. Transformation is like reading the wind while sailing, you may have to tack to one side and then the other, but your horizon point is always the goal. Shell could not grow it’s chemical business by doing things the way the oil business worked. They had to stay focused on doing what was necessary to grow a new kind of business and adapt their company along the way.
- Experiment and do more of what works: Once you’ve really unhooked from the past, you have tremendous freedom to try new things. Many won’t work and that’s ok because you’re learning what does. Fail fast and when you find out what works, do more of that and learn from the wisdom of failure. Sure you have limited resources, which provides some urgency, but there’s too much at stake and no going back, remember? The development of the Mozilla browser birthed the internet and even though Netscape (the company that productized Mozilla) isn’t around anymore, its investors made so much money they are now the Silicon Valley funders of much of the technology underlying the Internet as it continues to morph and grow so fast that less than two decades later people like me can build and manage a web site.
- Constantly let go: Skilled transformers are always ready to release that which has outlived its usefulness – a brand, a technology, a market, or a customer. Microsoft is actually a good example of doing this well and failing. Under Bill Gates, Microsoft at first ignored the Internet because its business model relied on multiple private enterprise networks, not a single public, open network. After Netscape’s wild success, however, Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and risked much of its product integrity to transform itself successfully into the dominant Internet-savvy company for a time. With the successful release of Internet Explorer it succeeded in dominating the desktop software market once more, putting Netscape out of business. However, while adapting its products to the Internet, it did not become Internet-centric and remained vulnerable to Google and subsequent Cloud initiatives. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft can, or wants to, transform itself fully into the Cloud. There is always a little bit of caterpillar carcass sticking to us and we must be ready to shed it the moment we are certain it’s holding us back. The art of it is in learning to know when that moment to let go actually arrives when you can begin leading your customers just as they are ready to let go too (you don’t want to get too far out in front of your customers).
- Be comfortable – but not too comfortable – with risk: There are no guarantees in life and there are certainly none with transformation. If transformation is anything, its unpredictable. Those that survive and thrive in it pay close attention and adapt quickly, managing and mitigating risk instead of trying to avoid it. Quite often the secret to success comes at odd times and in odd forms, and if you don’t open yourself to risk you’re not likely to discover it.
Learning the art personally
Because it’s an art more than science, the way to learn transformation is to experience it. Sometimes we’re thrown into a situation where we have no choice, but an opportunity we all have all the time is to become adept at transforming ourselves. It’s not just businesses that can transform, people can too and transformative leaders are often transformative human beings who become skilled at managing transformation in their own lives as well as at work.
Research says that it’s a small percentage of people – 5% – that can do so, but I take a broader view of transformation. I think we can become skilled at it if we try because we already are. We transform from children into adults, our bodies are biologically transforming all the time and everything I listed above is available to us all personally at any time. All we have to do is want that brighter future, understand what’s at stake if we stay where we are, and step boldly out to let the past go.
What do you think? Do you think transformation is hard? Do you think anyone can do it if they try? Can any company? What’s your experience with transformation?
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by Guest Author | Oct 20, 2023 | Leadership
It happens to all of us. We speak up and – crickets. A guy with our idea? Yay! Lots of kudos and discussion. Don’t get angry, get smart when this happens to you. Learn coping strategies to lead through the injustice. – InPower Editors
Ever have a really interesting idea at work or in the world, share it, and notice that you don’t get much of a response? Either because people just don’t seem excited about it or say they don’t understand it? And then a dude, maybe someone you know or don’t know, maybe someone who came up with the same idea, or someone who is intentionally trying to support you, shares this same idea and everyone responds enthusiastically?
Yeah, me too. Weird, right?! And more than a little frustrating sometimes. When this happens, we can try to talk louder, get upset, (if it happens enough) leave the project or team, or swallow our feelings of disappointment. Or we can bypass all of these things—while still noticing what’s going on—and not let this gender bias keep us from doing the good work.
Because, after all, do men really have all the best ideas out there? My guess is no, even though sometimes the credit doesn’t seem to break that way.
Here are a few ways I’ve learned how to do this, ways I’ve learned from both women and men mentors, and through trial and error:
Lead by using your voice. When you don’t feel heard, it’s easy to repeat yourself more emphatically or stop talking altogether. While both responses can sometimes be necessary, neither works well as a general rule. More effective is to just keep on using your voice, stating your case plainly, aligning yourself with people who can hear you. It’s worth remembering, too, that people often hear you even if they don’t tell you they do. As we know from Susan Cain, some of our best thinkers and leaders are quiet folks. The same is true when it comes to advocates for women.
Lead with questions. For whatever reason, questions get heard more than other things we say, especially flat statements we share with others that we think we know are true. When you ask an open, inquisitive question about how together, your team can move the work forward or about the purpose of the project, people tend to respond in kind—with an open-hearted, engaged response. Questions get everyone involved and thinking, which means not only do you make a huge contribution to the group by asking a powerful question, but you lift women’s voices up in the process.
Lead with the work. It’s not true that “good ideas are enough” in this world. It is true that good work often speaks for itself. Lead with the work, keep the work at the center of the conversation, and push the work out in front of the messed up social dynamics we’ve all inherited. You can (and probably still should) name the gender bias you encounter one way or another, but back your own ideas up as much as you’d back up others’ ideas by putting them out there. Be your own advocate. The journalist Ann Friedman does this well and frequently.
Lead by taking risks. It may or may not be true—women are more “relational” human beings. Some of us are, anyway. In my case, for example, I don’t want run with an idea unless I’ve got other people in on the idea with me. This isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes it slows me down. Invite people in on your projects and ideas, both inside and outside of organizations, but also run with them yourself. Visible action creates energy and inspires others to join you or support you.
Lead by creating new ways of getting the work done. I have no doubt, women and the men who support them are inventing the future. By this I mean, we are creating new systems, institutions, and models for getting work done across the board. Whether it’s Wendy Davis standing up to the Texas legislature or Rinku Sen calling for new strategies for racial justice organizing or the women at Skillcrush teaching other women how to code, learn the latest technology, and get their work out there —we are creating the new. Sometimes when we don’t feel heard, it’s because we’re genuinely saying something new that people haven’t heard (or been able to hear) yet. Jump into doing this new work, find your community, know that the world needs you.
And when all else fails, find your men allies and use them. What do you think? Share your tips for putting your work and your voice out there!
Article By: Lex Schroeder
Originally on: Take The Lead
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by Dana Theus | Oct 19, 2023 | Communicating With Confidence, Women in Leadership
Women make great leaders, but do they always make a great bosses? Yes, that’s a trick question. No one is a good boss because of their gender any more than because of their race, religion or geography of origin. But if you had a peek into my inbox over the last month, you’d be asking yourself the same question. Recently I’ve received a spate of client inquiries about the particular challenges of dealing with female bosses–and being the female boss–and so I’ve been looking at this particular issue through both lenses.
It’s no secret to the women in the workplace that there are pitfalls for women waiting at every turn when it comes to shaping your feminine leadership style among all the conflicting cultural stereotypes that run rampant through our business cultures.
- Escaping the Bitch label: You should be assertive, but not aggressive (what’s the difference again?)
- Being attractive but not sexy: You should dress to express your femininity but don’t invite any actual attraction
- Being taken seriously and taking your family seriously: You can prioritize family responsibilities as long as no one at the office notices that you’re doing it (lucky for you that your children never get sick!)
- Work twice as hard for less pay: Yes, you do need to prove yourself, but don’t expect anyone to reward you for it financially unless you ask, ask again and never stop.
Yes, cultural stereotypes are changing, slowly, and no, these challenges don’t ensnare us all, but being a female boss in a business culture where most of the bosses are men means that you typically don’t have a lot of guidance on what kind of communication and personal brand expression will help you be effective, be well thought of by higher-ups and feel authentic to who you are.
Thats where we coaches come in handy.
FIRST: Escape The Double Bind Mentality
The female boss: Stereotypical problems, personal solutions. – Click To Tweet
When I start working with executive coaching clients who are struggling with these issues, either as the female boss or the person trying to work with her, I always advise them to put aside the easy answers such as “women are mean to other women, so there’s nothing I can do about it.” Yes, the stereotypes exist for a reason and there are common dynamics between women that can feel catty and mean. If you believe that your boss is a witch, however, you’ll just treat her that way, which encourages her to act more witchy (at least in your eyes). And if you are the female boss who’s struggling to be taken seriously, lashing out at others in a meeting or ignoring your family so you can be available 24/7 isn’t a long term strategy that’s going to pay off for you, your team or your family.
I know. To this day I regret some angry displays and too-long work hours I put in early in my career. I have no idea if they hurt my career in the long run, but I know it violated my own ethic about who I wanted to be in a professional context and it wasn’t long before I left that career track in part because I wasn’t having the kind of success I wanted in those kinds of situations. (Today I realize that what I needed was a good coach or mentor. Ah well.)
The point is that once you decide that you’re not going to blame stereotypes or other people for the challenges you face, that’s when you can begin to see solutions that work authentically for you in your situation.
So put the easy blame aside and accept the reality that the world you live in is a puzzle for you to solve. Assume there is an authentic and effective solution to the interpersonal challenges you face, and you’ll be surprised at how easily you’ll begin to discover it.
SECOND: Stop Reacting, Start Choosing
This is mindfulness 101. Whether you’re the boss or the one dealing with her, whatever dynamic is not working, it’s a dynamic that has too much habit built into it. Let’s say you’re the female boss and you’re walking the “assertiveness vs. aggressiveness” line poorly. Before you can begin to shift your communication from aggressive to assertive you need to notice what the aggressiveness you’re feeling feels like before you open your mouth and react “aggressively.”
Once you notice what you’re actually feeling, and interrupt the habitual reaction that others interpret as aggression, then you have established the control you need to choose how you’re going to react and then you can choose a more “assertive” response.
This goes for the person dealing with the female boss too. Whatever she’s doing that makes you react in a way that doesn’t feel good to you, as soon as you’re able to notice your feelings, interrupt your habitual response and choose a more effective response, you’ll start feeling less triggered by her.
Easier said than done, I know, but that’s what coaches are for. If you can do it on your own, do it. If you can’t, get a coach to help you.
THIRD: Be Who You Want To Be
Gandhi was right.
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a (wo)man changes her own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards her. … We need not wait to see what others do.”
Bumper stickers have shortened the wisdom above to “be the change you want to see in the world,” but the original quote is actually more useful. All our relationships are nothing but the dynamics between ourselves and others. When we change ourselves and how we react to them, the relationship dynamics themselves change. This is why you may be terribly triggered by your female boss and the woman in the cube next to you thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. As counter-intuitive as it feels it’s not her, it’s you.
Whether you’re the female boss or the one dealing with her, ask yourself who you would be in each situation if you weren’t triggered and then be that person. It can seem impossible to even imagine if the relationship is very messed up but I can promise you that once you do it successfully once, you’ll begin to feel magically better.
I have a client now who’s dealing with a really challenging female boss. The boss began her career in a heavily male dominated and competitive, dog-eat-dog business environment. So she believes she has to fight everyone, including her own team, for the recognition and attention she needs to be successful. Unfortunately this means that my poor client, a team member, is regularly run over in the process. She hates it, understandably.
When my client noticed an accidental pattern of success with her boss, she came to me to figure out how to make it more intentional and less accidental. What was the pattern of behavior that made dealing with her aggressive (and even abusive) boss tolerable? Getting fed up and not taking it any more. In those instances where my client had simply had enough and declared her own thoughts and intent with a willingness to let the chips fall where they may, her female boss backed off and treated her with more respect.
In those moments where my client was less focused on how her boss was abusing her and more on how she wanted to be in the situation, her boss became (momentarily) reasonable. So be you. Whether you’re the boss or the team member, focus on being who you want to be. It works. Detrigger your instinctive desire to get angry or hurt and respond from a centered place with a willingness to let the other person react however they want to react. See what happens and deal with that in the same way.
Not every challenge for female bosses looks like aggression (though it seems to be the most common one in my inbox right now), so use these basic guidelines to help you manage whatever aspect of the double-bind you’re struggling with.
- If you’re not sure how to dress appropriately, ignore the latest fashion trend and explore your personal style with a desire to be authentic, attractive and confident
- https://inpowercoaching.com/leadership-development/conflict-management/If you’re struggling to blend your work and family, become a master at managing your personal energy in every situation, personal and professional
- If you’re struggling to learn to negotiate for equal pay with the men in your business, keep working at it
The challenges of being, and working for, a female boss are often caught up in the double-bind of the stereotypical challenges she faces, but the solution is always personal. Good luck.
Everyone struggles with emotional triggers that make us lash out or draw back in ways that hurt our relationships and personal brand. Learn more about how InPower Coaching can help you release these emotion triggers so you can manage all your relationships from a place of emotional calm and clarity.
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Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
by Guest Author | Oct 18, 2023 | Career Development
By:David Hassell
I left the first company that I founded. My co-founder and I had different values, and without realizing it, we created two disconnected cultures within the same company.
This is a common problem within startups. In growing organizations, employees often have no idea what’s going on in other departments. Marketing, sales and customer support don’t communicate, which means these teams might as well be operating as entirely different companies.
Whether your team is distributed across several offices or located under one roof, here are four ways you can create an environment centered on open, two-way communication that builds cohesion and productivity.
1. Institute a Transparent Workplace
A common mistake management teams make is not sharing information across the organization. This demonstrates a lack of confidence and can lead to distrust. The best way to prevent this is to practice open, transparent communication.
According to Michael Wolfe of Point Nine Capital, company leaders should share as much information with their teams as they can, including meeting notes, customer feedback, key data on financials, targets, fundraising and new hires. (Some companies even share salaries and stock options.)
Be discerning about the information you share, but don’t worry about overwhelming your teams. The people you want to hire at a startup are those who are smart and ambitious enough to want this information and will use it to enhance productivity and make the company better.
2. Get Rid of “Us vs. Them”
According to a 2012 Salesforce.com study, 86 percent of executives blame workplace failures on a lack of collaboration and poor communication. This secretive “us vs. them” mentality can lead to interdepartmental friction.
When employees aren’t communicating across departments, leaders need to build practices that strengthen relationships between different teams. At 15Five, we have a strong culture of open feedback and communication, but this is something we’ve built over time by establishing genuine human connections. For instance, we bring together our globally distributed team for a daily video call to celebrate recent successes and gather support for challenges.
Always look for ways to build connections between people — especially when there’s a lack of common work goals and interests. Open office layouts, group lunches, team outings and retreats can encourage productivity, collaboration and sharing.
3. Make Your OKRs Public
According to the same Salesforce.com study, 97 percent of employees and executives surveyed believe a lack of alignment within a team directly impacts the outcome of a task or project. Employees who have clear roles, responsibilities and deadlines are more likely to be held accountable.
To keep everyone aligned and focused on a set outcome, establish quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs). Always frame these within larger company goals to show people how their efforts support big-picture company objectives, and make all OKRs public throughout the organization.
4. Ask Specific Questions
Your employees have tremendous insight into the inner workings of your company, and the best way to tap into this intelligence is by asking the right questions. In addition to regular team meetings, an automated feedback tool that asks employees relevant questions can prove invaluable for recognizing achievements and identifying challenges.
More importantly, it’s wise to maintain regular face-to-face interactions. During these one-on-one meetings, you should ask pointed questions in a way that demonstrates genuine concern and understanding about employees’ roles. Instead of asking, “How are things going?” try questions along the lines of, “Hey, I noticed that X is happening. Do you need support?”
By maintaining regular, direct communication with team members, you’ll gain valuable insights into the operations of each department and be able to resolve issues quickly.
Communication and employee feedback aren’t just methods for getting more work out of people; they’re also vehicles for boosting employee loyalty, building alignment around goals and increasing productivity. Building a culture of transparent communication will open doors throughout your company and help your entire organization run more efficiently.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
Originally posted on The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
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Rewriting the narrative on women and power
by Dana Theus | Oct 17, 2023 | Career Development, Communicating With Confidence
Women are great communicators… aren’t we? Well, it depends on what you think the most successful aspect of communication really is. Mary hits it right on the nose. Good communicators, and powerful people, are excellent listeners. Effective communications skills start with listening. – InPower Editors
Sometimes, I like to think I’m a card carrying member of the Successful Communicator Club simply because I am a woman. As women, we can sometimes fall for the stereotype that we are members of the gender of superior communicators. Pop-psychology and pop-research can trick us into believing that we will always out-communicate a spouse, a boyfriend, a male boss. But if that were true, why are there so many articles giving us advice for how we could listen better to the men in our lives? (Here’s another perspective.)
Women have the same communication challenge as men – knowing how to listen effectively
I can speak to this from experience. I work with a lot of women. And I hope not to offend them here, but yes – there’s a lot of talking, but there isn’t a lot of listening. I have to repeat myself often. Or other women talk over me. I often have to interrupt people to get a word in edgewise because everyone feels the need to talk – few take a break or a pause. My favorite—the team will discuss something on a call, all agree, review supporting documentation, and then a week later I remind everyone of our previous discussion and I have to start from the beginning because no one listened the first time around.
Those who listen have the power. – via @MFBrodie – Click To Tweet
Sure, some of this is due to working remotely – it is hard to focus and listen to others when you don’t see them in person and rely on the phone, virtual tools and IM as the only means of communication. But there are other reasons. Women tend to:
- believe that they are great multi-taskers and don’t focus on listening (they believe they can email and listen – which isn’t true);
- believe they are great communicators from media stereotyping;
- have the perception that whomever has the floor to talk has the power in a discussion; and
- perceive men has having more status/power when they have the floor.
(Bullets 3 and 4, from Myth #6 Language Prejudice, Do you Speak American? PBS)
Those who listen have the power
My mom taught me that the person who speaks very little usually has more power because he uses his words wisely—so when he does speak, it will be about something important and worth listening to. What she didn’t teach me was that listening wasn’t about just hearing words – but observing gestures, facial expressions, and understanding the emotions of others in the room. Good listeners “people watch” body language, rather than thinking about their responses to what is being said. The person who talks gets floor time, but the person who listens understands what is going on – hearing what is and is NOT being said.
When we make our start in the world at school, the person in the power position is the teacher, speaking all day long. We learn indirectly that whomever speaks has the power; the listeners, conversely, have no power and are being “schooled.” This paradigm continues well into our professional lives, with men and women competing for floor time, believing this is how to achieve greater status.
The real power rests with those who listen to all perspectives and contribute to a final decision
Salespeople are now focusing more on listening to the customer – learning what his challenges are and offering a solution rather than telling the customer what he needs to do and buy his product. Salespeople are now participants in their customers decisions, helping them make that final call. This makes listening more important than ever for everyone in this information age – and not just for women.
We women have some work to do if we want to validate the stereotype of us being the gender of more effective communicators. In the meantime, we should pause from talking, listen to understand and with a few lessons from the men, teach each other how to be members of the Successful Communicator Club.
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by Dana Theus | Oct 14, 2023 | Coaching Advice, Corporate Culture, Emotional Intelligence at Work, Leadership
Many women are praised for having an intuitive handle on empowering those who work for them. Whether women are naturally good at this skill or not, true empowerment is the most challenging leadership style to master. Last month I read a book, Turn the Ship Around, that I think really nails the leadership skills necessary to do this well and earlier this week I wrote a book review on it for Smartblogs on Leadership. I’m reposting the book review for Turn the Ship Around here because women in leadership need to understand these EMpowerment and INpowerment principles to excel, even if they come by this approach naturally. Leadership is a learned art, regardless of your gender.
Leadership Upside Down: A Book Review of “Turn The Ship Around” by Captain L. David Marquet (Ret.)
Empowerment is bunk. Most people who’re serious about leadership know this, but it’s not because empowerment is a bad idea, it’s because most leaders don’t have the skill and courage to do it right. At its best, when we EMpower a follower, we give them the authoritative space to figure out for themselves that true leadership power comes from the INside, through a transformative and entirely personal process. We provide guidance and allow them to take true responsibility and total ownership. We tolerate deviations from our style in pursuit of solutions we never dreamed were possible. We believe they can do it so they believe they can do it. This requires a lot of wisdom, discipline, patience and courage by the “leader” who creates this special space, within which the EMpowered follower transforms into an INpowered leader.
Empowering leadership is more art than science. By definition, we’re sending our troops into the black box of their own soul where we have no control. The essence of empowerment is that you hand control to them and see what they can do with it. When it works, they boost performance with their creativity, drive and innovation. But of course, sometimes they don’t. Leading this way is impossible for control freaks, and nerve-wracking for everyone else, because we may end up presiding over a total performance nose dive, lost profits or angry customers. True empowerment, that leads to inpowered success, is not bunk, but it is a risk. Can you imagine doing this in your company?
Now imagine doing this on a nuclear submarine, where such a failed experiment could send hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars of U.S. Navy property and priceless human lives to the bottom of the ocean. Would you take an empowerment risk if you were in charge of that ship? Capt. L. David Marquet did and ten years later when it became clear that his approach had lasting positive impacts, he wrote a book about it.
Capt. Marquet, a Navy trained command-and-control leader, had this experiment practically thrust upon him when he was assigned to a ship he hadn’t expected to command, the USS Santa Fe, after training for 12 months to run the USS Olympia. Oops. Best laid plans and all that… Arriving on a new ship that he knew nothing about, he was wise enough to realize that empowering the crew – who did know the ship intimately – was the only way to go. It was an experiment that could have gone so very wrong, but thanks to the fact that Capt. Marquet did the hard work to figure out how to implement empowerment correctly, his ship and crew transformed from the worst-rated sub into the first-rated sub – in a year.
The Hunt for Red October Meets Harvard Business School
I’m not going to tell you more of Capt. Marquet’s story because I really want you to buy the book, Turn The Ship Around, and read it. It’s a fast and powerful read and you’ll want to read it more than once. Stephen Covey wrote the forward and one of the reviewers describes it as, “the Hunt for Red October meets Harvard Business School,” and he’s right.
You’ll enjoy the book, but here’s why it’s not just another book about leadership and empowerment. Marquet applies a military practitioner’s attention to detail and actually begins to decode the genome for the art of empowering leadership. He gives those brave leaders pursuing true empowerment some blueprints for building a black box to send their empowered leaders into, where they can discover their own inner power to lead.
For example, many leadership gurus talk about how important it is for empowered employees to be given visionary direction. Marquet calls this effort “Clarity” and breaks it down into 7 specific principles, including some we’ve heard before like striving for excellence, building trust and beginning with the end in mind. But he goes deeper and also identifies subtle but powerful distinctions between questioning and curiosity; he demonstrates what it looks like to use guiding principles in decision-making instead of slapping a vision on the wall and hoping people will figure it out.
A New Chapter In The Leadership Guru Book On Empowerment
Despite these great insights, however, I believe that Marquet has added a new chapter to the guru book on empowering leadership by identifying a key reason so many empowerment efforts fail. Marquet exposes, through principle and anecdote, the critical dependency between giving up leadership control and investing in giving your newly empowered leaders their own control mechanisms and technical competence. During one of the inspections where the Santa Fe received high marks, an inspector noted that the Santa Fe crew “tried to make as many mistakes” as other crews, but the control mechanisms they used to catch themselves and each other overrode the foul-ups before they could execute the errors. Similarly, through trial and error, Capt. Marquet discovered that giving people control without also giving them the technical knowledge to succeed was a recipe for disaster. By dissecting the Sante Fe’s experience, he breaks out the 8 principles of empowering “Control” and the 5 principles of “Competence.”
He also illuminates employees’ inherent desire to contribute to a successful organization when their own gifts and abilities are honored and trusted. My favorite anecdote from the book is the way that he outlawed chasing down noises in the ship (e.g., dropping a wrench) and “reporting” the noisy crew members for threatening to expose the Santa Fe to enemy subs’ sonar. Instead, he asked crew members to self-report when they made noises and before he knew it, more noises were being reported than sonar could detect AND the overall number of noise-makings went down. This might not have happened on another ship, but Marquet and the officers who conspired to revolutionize the command-and-control leadership model of the U.S. Navy did one very important thing; they did not reprimand noise-makers for self-reporting.
Remove the fear factor, reward responsibility and people will begin to see the benefits in accepting true ownership of their work.
The lesson here, which I believe is so important and which Turn the Ship Around makes so very clear, is that empowering leadership doesn’t work if you’re not willing to invest in your people and believe they can achieve greatness. Giving up control doesn’t mean giving up standards of excellence. In fact, the opposite is true. Standards of excellence become your primary control mechanism, and belief in your teams’ ability to accomplish them becomes your primary leadership power. If your people don’t have the knowledge and belief in themselves necessary to achieve excellence, the experiment’s not going to work and you can all too easily talk yourself back into the “do I have to do everything around here?” mentality that keeps so many organizations limited to the capacity and talent of their top management team.
Join The Movement?
David Marquet has coined the term “leader-leader” to describe this approach to empowering leadership that helps develop and grow inpowered leaders. I had the pleasure of meeting him personally and know that he believes in his bones that any approach except leader-leader will fail to achieve excellence in our increasingly complex world. He also knows that it’s going to take a movement to keep practicing and exploring these principles (including discovering more) until we all understand their true potential and every leader gets trained to implement them. He’s started the movement to apply these principles in business and I’m on board. How about you?
Follow David Marquet on LinkedIn.
This post originally appeared on SmartBlog on Leadership.
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by Guest Author | Oct 13, 2023 | Gender Equality, InPower Women Blog
Women have always been great leaders. We just don’t talk or hear about them.
Sometimes I’ll read articles about why women should be leaders, as if we need an argument upon argument to support women’s leadership. I have noticed that some of these articles focus on stereotypes – women’s personality traits, management styles, and differences. It’s almost as if male leaders and traits are portrayed as “bad” and female leaders are “good.” That’s troubling.
Stereotypes, although positive, are still stereotypes. Leaders should be evaluated as individuals.
Rather than prove why women make great leaders, I’d rather show how women have always been successful leaders by looking at their track records in three areas:
- History
- Motherhood
- Women business leaders
History
Men and women were considered equals in early Egyptian dynasties as well as Japan, China, India, Africa, and the Americas. In some cultures, laws (religious and secular) controlled women’s behaviors, mainly for inheritance and lineage.
If women were able to own land and trade like men, there may have been more women leaders than we know. Some may have been written out of history.
Here are a few we remember:
Hatshepsut – her tomb was discovered recently, her body hidden from its original location. She was a woman pharaoh erased from history. It is not clear why and it is unfair to assume it was simply because she was a woman; there is no proof. We do know that, “she reigned peaceably, building temples and monuments, resulting in the flourish of Egypt.” She is considered to be one the most successful pharaohs.
Artemisia I of Caria – In addition to being a queen of Carians (Turkey), Artemisia fought as an ally of Xerxes I, King of Persia, against the free Greek city states during the second Persian invasion of Greece (yes, she was the warrior leader in the the movie 300: Rise of an Empire). There are mixed reviews of her accomplishments:
- Herodotus praised her decisiveness and intelligence and emphasized her influence on Xerxes
- Thessalus, a son of Hippocrates, described her in a speech as a cowardly pirate
The Trung Sisters of Vietnam are celebrated by the Vietnamese for their attempts to halt Chinese domination in Vietnam. They were the daughters of a general, trained in the martial arts. They led a number of campaigns to remove the Han Chinese from Nanyue, and managed to resist additional attacks for 3 years. They were eventually defeated.
These are a handful of women leaders that we can find in history and we don’t always learn about in school. How many other women leaders are missing?
Motherhood
“The mother is a school; if she is well reared, you are sure to build a nation.”
– Arab proverb, from Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood:
Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued
Mothers are leaders. Many women and mothers don’t realize the power and influence they have (neither does society); mothers could influence and change the minds of a generation.
I think we have a tendency to discount motherhood. In our society today we are focused on achievements that are earned and you don’t necessarily earn a child. Being a mother is a biological result, but being a good mother is work.
Mothers at home are, by definition, unproductive, even though by educating and socializing their children, they contribute to the human capital that is critical to economic growth. And because their work isn’t quantified, they disappear from pictures of the economy that are drawn with the data.
–Paul Starr, Women’s Work, New York Time Review of Books
We sometimes dismiss what mothers will do for their children as to-do list activities, rather than see a woman’s larger strategy for leading and teaching. There is a LinkedIn piece by Jas Singh, How Mothers Make Great Leaders. He identifies 4 leadership traits he believes mothers exhibit – being giving, handling pressure, efficiency, and empathy.
There is an additional trait to add – the ability to create opportunities for others to shine and realize their potential.
My mother helped me with homework, taught me ethics and values, was a Girl Scout troop leader, drove me to lessons and appointments. That may sound like a long to-do list, but her motivation was to make sure I had as many opportunities as possible available to realize my potential. She didn’t want me to ignore my dreams and goals, thinking that they weren’t possible. She believed anything was possible.
That’s something great leaders do.
Women business leaders
Profits reflect great leadership. How leaders encourage their organization to earn revenue can vary (watch proof from Jim Tamm’s TED talk about cultivating collaboration, which men and women nurture). Rather than discussing leadership stereotypes or styles, let’s just focus on bottom line results:
“All the cash in the last two quarters is coming from companies run by women…I don’t have a single company run by a man right now that’s outperformed the ones run by women.”
— Kevin O’Leary, Shark Tank
Quantopian, a Boston-based trading platform based on crowdsourced algorithms, pitted the performance of Fortune 1000 companies that had women CEOs between 2002 and 2014 against the S&P 500’s performance during that same period. The comparison showed that the 80 women CEOs during those 12 years produced equity returns 226% better than the S&P 500.
— Pat Wechsler, Women-led companies perform three times better than the S&P 500, Fortune
With results like these, how can there be a debate about a woman’s ability to lead businesses? Why don’t we hear about these types of results more often? How someone achieves results is different than knowing what has been achieved. And women are achieving.
Women Have Always Been Great Leaders. Why Do We Need to Prove It? – Click To Tweet
Great leaders come from driven individuals – men and women. Rather than comparing the two and proving that women can be great leaders because of their traits or differences, why don’t we look at what women have achieved – historically, as mothers, and in business.
Why do we keep needing to prove ourselves?
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